m.

(M363) At the head of the State, at least nominally, were two kings, who
were numbered with the thirty senators. They had scarcely more power than
the Roman consuls; they commanded the armies, and offered the public
sacrifices, and were revered as the descendants of Hercules.

(M364) The persons of most importance were the ephors, chosen annually by
the people, who exercised the chief executive power, and without
responsibility. They could even arrest kings, and bring them to trial
before the Senate. Two of the five ephors accompanied the king in war, and
were a check on his authority.

(M365) It would thus seem that the government of Sparta was a republic of
an aristocratic type. There were no others nobler than citizens, but these
citizens composed but a small part of the population. They were Spartans--a
handful of conquerors, in the midst of hostile people--a body of lords
among slaves and subjects. They sympathized with law and order, and
detested the democratical turbulence of Athens. They were trained, by
their military education, to subordination, obedience, and self-sacrifice.
They, as citizens or as soldiers, existed only for the _State_, and to the
State every thing was subordinate. In our times, the State is made for the
people; in Sparta, the people for the State. This generated an intense
patriotism and self-denial. It also permitted a greater interference of
the State in personal matters than would now be tolerated in any despotism
in Europe. It made the citizens submissive to a division of property,
which if not a perfect community of goods, was fatal to all private
fortunes. But the property which the citizens thus shared was virtually
created by the Helots, who alone tilled the ground. The wealth of nations
is in the earth, and it is its cultivation which is the ordinary source of
property. The State, not individual masters, owned the Helots; and they
toiled for the citizens. In the modern sense of liberty, there was very
little in Sparta, except that which was possessed by the aristocratic
citizens--the conquerors of the country--men, whose very occupation was war
and government, and whose very amusement were those which fostered warlike
habits. The Roman citizens did not disdain husbandry, nor the Puritan
settlers of New England, but the Spartan citizens despised both this and
all trade and manufacture. Never was a haughtier class of men than these
Spartan soldiers. They exceeded in pride the fe